Foxwoods would cover cost of Milford sewer upgrades

MILFORD — Improvements to the town's water and sewer systems would be required to handle the resort casino proposed by Foxwoods Massachusetts, engineering consultants for the developer and town told selectmen Wednesday night.

Foxwoods representatives said the developer is prepared to pay for the design, construction and upgrades to infrastructure, including extending sewer lines to East Milford, where the casino would be situated.

The water and sewer meeting Wednesday, in the Milford High School auditorium, was the second of four topic-specific discussions about the proposed $1 billion, 660,000-square-foot casino off Interstate 495 and Route 16.

Last week, traffic impacts were presented. Social and economic impacts will be taken up next Wednesday, and environmental and site design will be discussed July 31.

Sean Reardon, Foxwoods' consultant from TetraTech, said the casino would add about 185,000 gallons per day to the sewer flow in phase 1 of the project and 106,000 gallons per day in phase 2, for a total of about 291,000 gallons per day.

The sewer treatment plant currently can effectively handle an average 4.3 million gallons per day. On any one day, the plant can physically handle 12 million gallons per day.

"There would definitely be improvements throughout the community, with the biggest … being removal of 'inflow and infiltration,' " Mr. Reardon said.

Under state environmental mandates, the developer would be required to eliminate five times the amount of water getting into the sewer system through leaky pipes and runoff for each gallon of new sanitary sewer flow the project would add.

Foxwoods would also commit to designing and constructing downstream sewer structure, extending sewer lines to East Milford, metering sewer pipe flows, assisting funding a hydraulic system to physically handle peak flows and reducing water use through conservation.

To improve water production, Mr. Reardon said, Foxwoods would pay for improvements to the Clarks Island well, one of the town's water sources, which currently shuts down four months a year to prevent freezing.

Milford Water Co., a private supplier, gets water from Echo Lake, the Charles River and wells on Dilla Street, Clarks Island and Godfrey Brook.

Mr. Reardon said the developer's upgrade of well sites would offset the casino's projected .17 million gallons per day of water use by 135 percent. It would also institute strict water conservation and reuse measures.

Under the state's water management permit for 2014, the town can draw an average of 3.14 million gallons per day. However, the developers said the "safe yield" of authorized withdrawal is an average 3.84 million gallons per day. Mr. Reardon said Foxwoods would work with the town to amend its water management act permit based on actual use, if necessary.

Scott Butera, CEO of Foxwoods Massachusetts, said developers have worked hard to present solutions to concerns raised by the community about casino plan.

"We think it's projects like ours that will help us deal with those types of constraints," he said, referring to the casino's potential benefit to local coffers in light of the tight state budget just signed.

John Seaver, co-chairman of Casino-Free Milford, which opposes the project, said before the meeting that the developer's water use projections were flawed. "The demand in their analysis has not incorporated any other growth in Milford besides their own," he said, pointing to ongoing growth in residential development, businesses and at Milford Regional Medical Center.

Selectman William Buckley, board chairman, told the consultants the time the community has to assess this information was "insufficient." He asked that future reports be made available to town officials with more than a day to review them.